‘But on the train ride from the airport to my hometown, a route that ran through an overdeveloped landscape strewn with tidy cities crisscrossed by sparkling-clean rain-washed streets of well-tended houses with well-tended gardens and fences, I became painfully aware of how false a world it was, yet how much a part of it I was, so much so that I could never leave it. It was simply out of the question.’

• Bernhard Schlink, Homecoming